She rolled her eyes, whispered, God, and then composed herself. She went to see what Aunt Margaretha wanted now.

‘Must I call you twice?’

‘I’m sorry, Aunt, I didn’t hear you.’

Aunt Margaretha shook her head, a quick, irritated movement that wobbled her old jowls and jangled her long silver earrings, hanging low on doughy lobes. She was on the settee, heavy and spread out, the lawyer Seidlitz beside her on a chair, and Günther standing nearby, silent as always.

‘And how was Napoleon?’ Margaretha said. ‘Did you give him my regards?’

‘Of course, Aunt, just as you wished. We had schnapps together.’

Margaretha scoffed. The lawyer proceeded to unbuckle two thin straps on a satchel in his lap. He removed a document scroll and laid it on the satchel. Seidlitz was short, fat and tightly bound in unfashionable clothes, still preferring to display his plump calves by wearing trousers with leggings and high-heeled shoes. He crossed his legs and bounced his foot lightly up and down, pointing the toes.

‘We are to have a guest,’ Margaretha said. ‘A Frenchman.’

‘Who?’

‘Général Michel François Fourés,’ the lawyer Seidlitz said, unfurling and holding up the document that had arrived earlier from the French military administration.

‘Dear God!’ Margaretha said. ‘What will people say? Serving the enemy!’

‘We are not the only ones, Frau von Hoffmann,’ the lawyer said. ‘Most of the French officers are being billeted with the finest families across the city.’

‘My life has been cruel and unrelenting!’ Margaretha said. ‘And persists!’

Elisabeth’s aunt longed only to return to her bed, where she spent most of her time these days. For this sentence of loneliness, and for her ageing spinsterhood, she explicitly blamed her family, and most particularly Elisabeth’s father, her brother, whose face she saw each time she looked upon the rosy bloom of her young niece. She blamed Elisabeth’s mother, too. They’d both died young so inconsiderately and burdened her with their loathsome child.

‘It will not be forever, Frau von Hoffmann,’ the lawyer Seidlitz said. ‘We will endure and soon prosper once again.’

Aunt Margaretha began to weep. Günther reached across and patted her shoulder. The lawyer joined in on the other side.

Elisabeth said, ‘Can I go now?’

THE VULTURE, OTHER SPECIMENS, AND THE SEASHELL

Sarcoramphus papa, on a heavy wooden plinth; scaly bald head of red, black and mandarin yellow, hooked red-orange beak beneath its grisly caruncle, enormous black-and-white wings, kinked like giant arrowheads and held aloft, as though the bird were about to hop over the furniture on its huge, blunt talons. Its eye followed Johannes Meyer, the eye disconcertingly alive. He moved past it, at a distance.

The room was spacious, opulently furnished, painted vases and cut-glass bowls and silver trinkets everywhere. A clock ticked and eased the silence.